Not Out of the Woods Yet: Deforestation Regulation, Daily Brief, 28 May, 2024

Trees. Everyone loves trees.

We love to look at them, walk among them. We also love to do things like live on a habitable planet and breath – two things trees help us do by pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and pumping out oxygen.

And yet, we’re destroying trees at an alarming rate. Last year, the world lost the equivalent of almost ten football fields of climate-critical forest per minute.

The problem is while we love trees, we also love things like wood, palm oil, soy, coffee, cocoa, rubber, and cattle. Industrial-scale agriculture is by far the single largest driver of deforestation worldwide, and the global trade in these seven things, and their related products, is among the main culprits.

Deforestation is the second largest source of the greenhouse gas emissions causing the climate crisis, after the burning of fossil fuels. Once cut down, trees not only stop absorbing carbon dioxide, they also release their stored carbon – a double whammy for the climate.

Hitting the brakes on deforestation globally is essential, but getting global agreement on anything is tough. It’s made more complicated by the fact the bulk of deforestation happens in the tropics, while a large proportion of the consumption of the products happens elsewhere.

One serious effort to address this came last summer, when the European Union adopted a new law recognizing Europe’s oversized role in driving deforestation around the world. The EU’s Deforestation-Free Products Regulation (EUDR) targets global trade in the seven commodities mentioned above.

The new regulation requires EU companies to ensure what they import and export isn’t produced on land deforested after December 31, 2020. They also have to make sure these commodities are produced in conditions that comply with laws on land use rights, labor rights, and other human rights. Businesses will have to start complying with the new regulation from January next year.

Several countries have been leading the way on this. A number of EU and non-EU states are gathering in Madrid this week for a summit to push further for deforestation-free, sustainable commodities.

That’s a good thing, too, because in the context of upcoming elections around Europe, we’re also seeing attempts at pushback. Some politicians have been attacking the new regulation, calling for a delay in its implementation. Some business lobbies continue to push for voluntary schemes instead of regulation, ignoring their history of failure.

Neither delays by politicians nor promises of good will by companies will solve global deforestation. If they did, we wouldn’t be losing ten football fields of forest every minute.

We need this regulation. We need the trees.